Agnès Wyler – Strange Fruit: Le Fruit des Lèvres
As a child, Agnès Wyler dreamed that her lips had turned into books – a transformation born from the near-homophony of the French words lèvres (lips) and livres (books). This dream image became the point of departure for Lèvres, a body of ceramic works first presented at Nieves, where books and bookworms inhabited the familiar architecture of the bookshelf.
For Zurich Art Weekend, they return in a new constellation: gathered on a circular mirror, they leave the shelf behind and enter another space of appearance. No longer aligned, Wyler’s books begin to gravitate. The mirror gathers them into a shifting composition, producing images that exceed the objects themselves. Reflection doubles forms, folds the viewer into the work, and transforms a collection into a field of relations.
The title Strange Fruit: Le Fruit des Lèvres brings together different histories of language, memory, and transformation without resolving them. If Lèvres emerged from a dream in which the body became literature, Strange Fruit follows that metamorphosis further, allowing books to acquire a second life as objects, images, and companions. Between book and body, between image and object, the works occupy an uncertain territory where meaning emerges through proximity, association, and encounter.
The choice of ceramic is central. If books traditionally belong to the circulation of ideas, ceramic introduces another temporality: one of duration, fragility, and permanence. These books can no longer be opened. They preserve neither stories nor information, but presence and absence at the same time. What remains is the residue of reading, the material trace of imagination.
Arranged upon the mirror, the works form a speculative community. They face one another, reflect one another, and acquire a second life as images. In this sense, the installation extends the life of Lèvres while moving beyond it. The books survive their former condition, entering a new state in which relationships matter more than classifications. Part library, part still life, part constellation, Strange Fruit: Le Fruit des Lèvres proposes a space where literature becomes matter, matter becomes image, and every image remains open to further words and readings.
Mirror Display conceived by Agnès Wyler, arranged by Niki Hwang
On display during Zurich Art Weekend, June 12 – 14
Price on request, please contact us
All titles by Agnès Wyler
As a child, Agnès Wyler dreamed that her lips had turned into books – a transformation born from the near-homophony of the French words lèvres (lips) and livres (books). This dream image became the point of departure for Lèvres, a body of ceramic works first presented at Nieves, where books and bookworms inhabited the familiar architecture of the bookshelf.
For Zurich Art Weekend, they return in a new constellation: gathered on a circular mirror, they leave the shelf behind and enter another space of appearance. No longer aligned, Wyler’s books begin to gravitate. The mirror gathers them into a shifting composition, producing images that exceed the objects themselves. Reflection doubles forms, folds the viewer into the work, and transforms a collection into a field of relations.
The title Strange Fruit: Le Fruit des Lèvres brings together different histories of language, memory, and transformation without resolving them. If Lèvres emerged from a dream in which the body became literature, Strange Fruit follows that metamorphosis further, allowing books to acquire a second life as objects, images, and companions. Between book and body, between image and object, the works occupy an uncertain territory where meaning emerges through proximity, association, and encounter.
The choice of ceramic is central. If books traditionally belong to the circulation of ideas, ceramic introduces another temporality: one of duration, fragility, and permanence. These books can no longer be opened. They preserve neither stories nor information, but presence and absence at the same time. What remains is the residue of reading, the material trace of imagination.
Arranged upon the mirror, the works form a speculative community. They face one another, reflect one another, and acquire a second life as images. In this sense, the installation extends the life of Lèvres while moving beyond it. The books survive their former condition, entering a new state in which relationships matter more than classifications. Part library, part still life, part constellation, Strange Fruit: Le Fruit des Lèvres proposes a space where literature becomes matter, matter becomes image, and every image remains open to further words and readings.
Mirror Display conceived by Agnès Wyler, arranged by Niki Hwang
On display during Zurich Art Weekend, June 12 – 14
Price on request, please contact us
All titles by Agnès Wyler